Alpha lactalbumin is a whey protein, found among other places, in mothers milk. It has recently been in the news as the primary protein used in the search for a cure for breast cancer.

For the last eight years, Dr. Vincent Tuohy, at the Cleveland Clinic, has been searching for a vacine for breast cancer. Dr. Tuohy discovered that mice injected with the vaccine, based on Alpha lactalbumin, did not develop breast tumors, while 100 percent of the mice that were not vacinated, had breast tumors.

The vacine also seems to inhibit the growth of pre-existing tumors.

In an interview he also states that "There's nothing fancy about it. We're vaccinating against something that isn't there unless you have tumors, so it shouldn't harm you. And it should kill the tumors,".

The main part of the vaccine, a protein called Alpha lactalbumin found in lactating breasts, is also found in breast tumors, but not in healthy breasts. It is suggested that women who are finished breast feeding, would recieve the vaccine thus boosting their own immune systems and supplying the means to kill off cancerous cells while not damaging healthy ones.

"We think that breast cancer is a completely preventable disease in the same way that polio is completely preventable," Dr. Tuohy says.

This sort of research gives hope to anyone who has, or knows of anyone with breast cancer. To say nothing of outright prevention. In 2009, The American cancer society estimates that there was 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer and 40,170 deaths from breast cancer.